Add another name to the list of powerful men being accused of sexual harassment in Hollywood. Reported by the Los Angeles Times, Oscar-nominated writer and film director, James Toback has been accused of sexual harassment by more than 30 women. USA TODAY
Actresses Rachel McAdams and Selma Blair have joined a list of nearly 40 other women accusing writer/director James Toback of sexual harassment, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
McAdams, 38, and Blair, 45, both spoke to Vanity Fair for a story published Thursday. Their stories appear consistent with those of other women, including Julianne Moore, who accuse the 72-year-old Toback of luring aspiring actresses to his hotel room for an audition.
In their case, it was for his 2001 dramedy Harvard Man, about a basketball player (Entourage's Adrian Grenier) who arranges to throw a game to earn money to replace his parents' home.
Selma Blair
When the future star of Legally Blonde was negotiating with Toback’s team about their meeting, she had to insist on meeting him in the hotel restaurant rather than his room as he wanted. But when she arrived for their meal, he was a no-show and she was directed to his room.
“Looking back, I don’t think James Toback ever planned to come down to the restaurant,” she said.
About 40 minutes into their conversation, he tried to convince her to take off her clothes before she read a monologue, saying it was a trust exercise.
“Why would my character need to be naked?” she asked him. “She is a lawyer in a courtroom.”
Blair says she gave in and removed her top, recalling, “I do remember looking down at the script and seeing my bare chest and not being able to focus on anything but the words and my face being so hot and puffy and feeling so ashamed.”
She says Toback described her body as “Eastern European” and that she needed “a lot of work.”
When she tried to leave, he asked her to have sex with him, despite the fact that he was married with a girlfriend on the side.
He blocked the door and said, “You have to do this for me. You cannot leave until I have release.” She tried to negotiate, asking, “What do I have to do? I cannot touch you. I cannot have sex with you.” They settled on a compromise where he could climax without her having to actively participate.
Afterward, Blair says Toback warned her, “There is a girl who went against me. She was going to talk about something I did. I am going to tell you, and this is a promise, if she ever tells anybody, no matter how much time she thinks went by, I have people who will pull up in a car, kidnap her, and throw her in the Hudson River with cement blocks on her feet. You understand what I’m talking about, right?”
She told her agent never to put her or any other woman in a room with him again.
Blair, who still feared for her life for 20 years later, initially took part in the L.A.Times story on the condition of anonymity. She changed her mind and decided to speak out publicly after Toback issued a blanket denial, saying he’d never met any of the 38 accusers listed and that poor health (diabetes and a heart condition) made it “biologically impossible” for him to do the things he was accused of.
“When he called these women liars and said he didn’t recall meeting them and that the behavior alleged could not be attributed to him, I just felt rage and an obligation to speak publicly now,” Blair said.
Rachel McAdams
McAdams, who earned a supporting-actress Oscar nomination in 2016 for her role in best-picture winner Spotlight, said she was a 21-year-old theater student when met Toback in Toronto around 1999.
“He invited me to sit on the floor which was a bit awkward,” she recalled. “Pretty quickly, the conversation turned quite sexual and he said, 'You know, I just have to tell you. I have masturbated countless times today thinking about you since we met at your audition.' ”
After some manipulation disguised as acting exercises, he disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned, he told her, "I just jerked off in the bathroom thinking about you. Will you show me your pubic hair?”
McAdams refused and excused herself before anything else could happen. She also reported the incident to her agent, who said, "I can’t believe he did it again. This isn’t the first time that this has happened. He did this the last time that he was in town. He did this to one of my other actresses.”
"That is when I got mad, because I felt like I was kind of thrown into the lion’s den and given no warning that he was a predator."
Julianne Moore
Oscar winner Julianne Moore added her name to the growing list of accusers on Tuesday. In a couple of direct tweets to reporter Glenn Whipp, she wrote that Toback "approached me in the 80's (sic) on Columbus Ave with the same language (that's detailed in the Times story). He "wanted me to audition, come to his apt... I refused. One month later he did it again with the EXACT same language."
The allegations, which Toback denied to the Times, arrive as the Harvey Weinstein scandal continues to roil Hollywood. Weinstein, co-founder of Oscar-winning movie production company The Weinstein Company, is in treatment after accusations that he sexually harassed and assaulted women in Hollywood, including Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lupita Nyong'o and dozens more.
Toback may not be a familiar name to many, but he is behind well-known movies such as 1974's The Gambler (starring James Caan and Paul Sorvino), 1987's The Pick-up Artist (Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald), 1991's Bugsy (Warren Beatty and Annette Bening) and The Private Life of a Modern Woman (Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin), which premiered last month in Italy at Venice Film Festival.
USA TODAY has reached out to Toback's representative for the filmmaker's response to the report.
The Times says 31 of the women spoke on the record about their encounters with Toback, which go back decades. The Weinstein scandal prompted some of them to come forward. On Thursday, Whipp reported that "200 additional women contacted The Times and, in emails and phone calls, recalled similar encounters" with Toback to those detailed in the original story.
"The majority of the new accounts, which have not been verified, told of Toback approaching women in the streets of Manhattan, offering them the chance at a part in an upcoming movie, and a wide range of unwanted sexual advances and behavior," Whipp wrote.
A 1989 article in Spy magazine noted that Toback would often scout for potential actresses to work on his projects at a market on New York's Upper West Side. Spy spoke to 13 women who gave various accounts of questionable encounters with Toback. The more recent Los Angeles Times piece said he would approach women in Central Park, standing in line at the bank or at the drug store. If they didn't recognize him, he would name-drop the movies that he'd worked on and their stars.
Among Toback accusers is Louise Post, a guitarist and vocalist for the band Veruca Salt, who met Toback while attending college in 1987. On Monday, as part of the Twitter hashtag #MeToo campaign, the band's account tweeted: "Us too: by bosses, boyfriends, male babysitters, taxi drivers, strangers and movie director/pig #jamestoback #metoo."
“He told me he’d love nothing more than to masturbate while looking into my eyes," Post told the Times. “Going to his apartment has been the source of shame for the past 30 years, that I allowed myself to be so gullible.”
Actress Echo Danon told the Times that in the writer's trailer on the set of 1999's Black and White, Toback knelt in front of her, put his hands on her thighs, and told her, “If you look into my eyes and pinch my nipples, I’m going to come in my pants right now.” After she resisted, he backed down. It's an account similar to an allegation detailed in the earlier Spy piece, in which an editor named "Kay" told the magazine she was approached by Toback on the street in New York in September 1986.
Asia Argento, one of Weinstein's accusers, commended Danon for speaking out. She tweeted Sunday: "My friend @echodanon is one of the #heroes who survived the attack of deplorable #JamesToback and with her courage exposed his horrific M.O."
On Thursday, Argento spoke out again on Twitter about the number of women stepping forward against Toback, calling him a "serial predator."
Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn posted Sunday afternoon on Facebook that he's been told of Toback's alleged behavior since the 1990s. "This dude was EVERYWHERE," Gunn writes. "I have personally met at least FIFTEEN WOMEN, probably more, who say that he's accosted them in NYC."
Gunn's post says Toback "has done this to three girls I’ve dated, two of my very best friends, and a family member ... twice. Yes, he came up to her twice with the same stupid line, not realizing she was the same person."
Though Gunn says he didn't witness any of the incidents, "I’ve heard them again and again from some of the people I trust most in the world, I know the chances of them being untrue … well, it would just be impossible," he writes. "I knew it was their choice whether or not they wanted to come forward publicly, but I let them know I would have their backs if they did."
Gunn concluded that's why he decided to post: "This is me doing my best to fulfill that promise."
During the 'Elle' Women in Hollywood event, Jennifer Lawerence and Reese Witherspoon candidly opened up about their own experiences with harassment in Hollywood. USA TODAY
Contributing: Carly Mallenbaum
